Founded in the late ’80s just before the collapse of the Iron Curtain by Hungarian conductor Adam Fischer, the Österreichisch-Ungarische Philharmonie (aka, the Austro-Hungarian Philharmonic) had already recorded the complete symphonies of Franz Josef Haydn for the English Nimbus label in the ’90s when it returned to selected symphonies for the German Musikproduktion Dabringhaus und Grimm label in the 2000s. And good as the earlier performances were, the later performances – in this case, Symphonies No. 88 and No. 101 plus the Overture to the opera L’isola disabitata – are even better. Familiarity with the entire body of Haydn’s orchestral works has bred only deeper understanding and greater fondness in these musicians and the thousands of small but telling improvements in their performances. Listen just to Symphony No. 88’s Menuetto and Trio – to the swaggering upbeat into big timpani downbeat in the Menuetto or the evocative woodwinds in the Trio with the strings swelling delightfully behind them. In every moment of these performances, Fischer and his musicians show that sort of attention to detail – and that kind of affection for idiom. Recorded in breathtakingly realistic sound in the main hall of Estrahazy Castle – the room for which most of Haydn’s orchestral music was originally conceived and executed – this disc deserves to be heard by anyone who loves great music and great art. Review by James Leonard